Nectar and Teeth: Red flags & Toxic Love

0:00Welcome to Skin and Soul. I'm Gwenm Carstley, a transformational body, sex, and soul coach. And I'm inviting you on a bold, unfiltered journey into the heart of our humanity through the lens of arrows. This is where we strip away the shame, dive into the unspoken, and embrace the wild, raw truth of our desires. Together we'll crack open the taboo, uncover our deepest intimacies, and awaken the pulse of our sexual essence. Because real transformation, it's messy, it's thrilling, and it's oh so delicious. Buckle up loves. Skin and soul beyond the pale starts in three, two, one. Let's go. Hello and welcome back. I'm Gwenm. I'm your host of Skin and Soul Beyond the Pale. And the question I have for you today on the table is, why do we keep reaching for the thing that we already know can and most likely will hurt us? Every love story has a flower in it, his head too. Dr. Stephen Paul Edwards was 54, four times divorced, 20 years on stage teaching people to build the life of their dreams when he texted a woman he'd met online.

1:06He'd asked her, what's your favorite flower? She responded with bird, a bird of paradise, and then quickly followed with Venus flytrap. His book, the Venus flytrap, lies a sex lies and repercussions book one of his memoirs tells the tale. Dr. Stephen is an international speaker, author and PhD in spiritual counseling whose memoirs are true stories, filled with red flags obsession sex chaos and relationship he knew was dangerous, but kept returning to anyway. It is also the same woman he still calls the love of his life. Stephen welcome. Welcome to Skin and Soul. I appreciate that one little, one little correction which is funny, right? So I asked her what her favorite flower was, right? And she said, we heard a paradise, right? And I joked with her, right? So first of all, it is my favorite flower. So I just said, oh, no, no way mind to. And then I said jokingly, I said, it's a bit expensive, though, so watch the second favorite. Now, who asked somebody that nobody asked someone, you know woman tells you what your favorite flower is, that's the end of it, right? For some reason, I said, yeah, it's a bit expensive, though, so watch the second favorite.

2:18That's when she said Venus flytrap, which I think is a more costly flower, wouldn't you say? You know, I don't know the whole thing is meant to, but the point is, what are the chances that I'll ask you that? Yeah, the chances, you know, and you know, I tell people, look, people tell you who they are within the few minutes of you meeting them, but we just don't want to hit the red flag. You intuition comes up. And of course, when she said Venus flytrap, I went, whoa, you know, my into it, you know, came in immediately. But as you just said, you know, very often when we get that intuitive bump, we don't listen. You know, we justify, right? And I just went, well, I like a little bit of danger, right? A little bit of danger, which is also, you know, answering your other question into relationships that we know going in can be disruptive. And you know, there's a lot of different ways. Well, part of it is it because exciting, right? Secondly, because we, we tell ourselves, well, I can deal with it, how bad can it be, right? We don't know that until we get in, right?

3:26And so there's, there's numerous reasons we do that. And I, you know, I was a little cocky, I was thinking, oh, how bad can it be? Right? You know, how difficult can it be? And, you know, the book is the story, hilarious story, partly of me getting into that and not being able to find the answer. And I'm trying to find my way out of it, right? And the role man's side of it, but also the lessons I learned as a result of it, you know, recognizing that it didn't happen to me. It happened for me. And all the circumstances were perfect. As you know, the universe creates a perfect situation for you, eventually to face yourself and the mirrors that were there that allow me to transcend flaws in my own, not that I'm still any flaws, but I'm just saying the flaws that caused me to attract that into my life. She came into my life because basically I attracted it. And I was at the, the vibrational level where I needed to attract that energy into my life so that I could go through the healing process, which the healing process is not all sweet bows and arrows, right? It's can be very painful.

4:39Yeah. And so when you look back, because you say that this is a love story, right, that she's the greatest, but still the greatest love of your life. And so when, when you look back and think, what is what was your definition of love at the time? Well, you know, obviously, you want to be loved for who you are, right? You want to be appreciated. You want to be loved. And part of it was that her condition caused her to not believe that she was loveable. And so my challenge was I loved her, but getting it to believe it, right? Because very often people have been through traumatic experience. So for example, you know, when she was a kid, she was born into tremendous wealth of fathers ability, right? So, but what was he focused on is business and making money. And he was very analytic. It was a genius with mathematics and being an analyst, right?

5:39But what he wasn't good at is giving his door to the emotional support that she needed. And so her belief became that men care about more about money than love. So she felt abandoned, right? Then, you know, like a lot of kids do if they don't get love in a positive way, they're going to act out, right? So she acted out really, really, you know, seriously to the point where there's a father told me she did some terrible things when she was a kid, but she was just looking for attention, right? But even so, you can't say whether you're just looking for attention, that's okay. Then so the next thing he puts it in a sanicide and she can't get out. So the perception that she created, the belief that she created, if my father can't love me then what a what man is ever going to love me? All my father wanted was to make money. So all men care about is making money. Well, I'm smarter than most men, but she was like I said, a father was a genius. So she got those genes using incredibly intelligent.

6:39So she decided that she was going to destroy wealthy men, take everything off them to prove that she was smarter, that she could be successful so her father would love her. That's a lot, right? And I walk into that. I have no idea about any of that, right? But at the same time when I talk about mirrors, so first of all mirrors come in a many different forms. You can go into a hole in mirrors and they all reflect different parts of you, right? So one of the mirrors that was a perfect reflection was the fact that I was in an asylum when I was 16. I had mental illness, right? So there's a perfect, a perfect mirror that meant we had something in common, right? That's just one example, right? So we had a lot in common and you know, she's five foot 11 and a bare feet, a former international supermodel. We're living in a mansion with a sex room. I mean, how bad could it be, right? I mean, there's a lot of lore there, you know, the pattern of a toxic relationship is the lore, you know, triggering.

7:39It is the closing, someone I talk about it, I use the Venus flychappers a metaphor for a toxic relation. Yes, it's the perfect. So you've got the lore, you'll load into it with the beauty, the, she had tremendous charisma, right? Very intelligent, love intelligence. So she had a lot of going on for that was perfect for me to lure me into a relationship that was going to teach me more than I could ever imagine. You know, I say to people, look, I've worked with Tony Robbins for years, right? Learn a tremendous amount unbelievable. It was like a pressure cooker of learning where we'd rob a key of psyche on the financial side. There's different people that have been incredibly powerful mentors for me, but nothing has taught me as much as this relationship with TN did. Now, I'm not saying I got it right away. I didn't. I was in it, right? It was a subjective, right? But after, you know, the fallout of this whole thing, right? Which was intense. I had to, you know, get through the consequences of it, right? Losing myself, losing my identity, losing my belief in confidence in myself, and then rebuilding myself from the ground up.

8:51And also figuring out how and why it happens so it never happens again, right? So I went through this incredible transformation over four years, right? Really studying it, learning all the process, you know, called young you name it, right? And so now I travel around the world telling people how stupid I was at the time, how crazy this was and how it destroyed me and how I rebuilt myself and how other people can do the same thing. Well, why do you and why do you think people go back again and again, we use the toxic relationship. And I think oftentimes we mix up addiction with love. Yes. That the that the that the drawing in is is love itself when I think in many ways it can't be any farther from it, right? Because where is the love for yourself first? And so I think one of my questions for you is what were what what and you was drawn to this? Because like you said, if we're all mirrors, what in you was was calling this in?

9:52Okay, so when I said at the beginning is there are many forms of mirrors, right? Very, very different forms of mirrors. And most people are not trained how to see him, right? So some people will say, well, you know, everything is a mirror, but I would never physically abuse anybody. I would never emotionally abuse anybody. So how can that possibly be a mirror? Here's why you would never do that to somebody else, but you allowed it to be done to you. And there's the mirror. It's mirroring back to you yourself worth of what you believe about yourself, what you believe is okay for others to do to you. And what they're what it's okay, what you're going to make okay, right? So we need to work on, you know, first of all, helping you with helping you understand what are these patterns came from, right? Why is that important? Well, because when we're usually these come from childhood, not always, right? But 99.99% of the time it comes from childhood experiences usually with your parents, but again, not always, right?

10:52You can come from, you know, abuse from relatives or whatever, right? But they usually formed in your childhood and you have no awareness of that. What happens is because you're in a confined situation, you know, usually it can't speak out about it, right? Either you're not allowed to, your parents will let you, they tell you you're just being crazy, you know, you're too set, whatever it is, right? All this is push it down. But what people don't realize that energy doesn't go away, the anger, that resentment, that pain is now held in the cells of your body. Now, everything in this entire universe is vibrating energy, its frequency, right? So you now have now buried all this negative energy in the cells of your body and it lowers your vibration. What you emanate in the world and whatever you emanate is what you're going to attract. Period. There's nothing you can do about that. You know, going to all the therapy, doing all the things that people tell you to do is not going to matter one eye-order until you release that energy from your body.

12:00Now you're emanating a completely different vibration, a different frequency, and then, and only then, are you going to attract a different type of person in your life? I was just talking to a friend of mine, it was also just therapy. And he said, you know, would you get a lot of people that keep repeating the same pattern? I said all the time, because there's nothing else you can do, you know? People say I'm not going to date for a year. Well, you're wasting your time unless you're going to spend that time working on you, because when you go back into the dating pool, what are you going to do? You're going to come to me and you're going to say, I can't believe this, I just met the same person in a different body. And he's got the same frequency, right? Once you've healed those patterns, and I call it, I said people, listen, you don't have a relationship problem, you've got a pattern problem. All you've got to do is figure out where that came from and release that energy from the cells of your body. And now we can start looking at how you can attract the person you really want. And the reason that becomes challenging is because people have now formed beliefs about the opposite sex, right?

13:05Yes. All women are either way, both sides do it, right? And now, so now you've got your projecting out what we call the transparent belief into reality. And you're going to manifest that perspective or that expectation of the opposite sex, because you're looking through what I call these transparent beliefs. This is how you perceive the world, right? So hopefully that answers your question. It does. I mean, you know, what I find really interesting. So in the book, there's, there's a lot of chaos, right? It's what I consider, you know, there's a lot of sex. It's not for anybody under 18 as you put it, put down the book. It's, it's very graphic. And the cycle goes, right? Like it shows the cycle repeatedly. And that's what I want people to get is the same thing over and over again. Yes, exactly. Yes. And at what, you know, at what point, you know, first of all, in the intensity was masquerading as intimacy, right?

14:08Because again, you know, I think there's like a sense of intimacy where people get confused. Oh, this feels so much. And so therefore, it must be intimate. And it's really, you know, what I found was two wounds. So in your say, speaking to it, right, two wounds, very strong wounds coming together of unhealed of all of that unhealed wound coming together and creating this explosion. Yeah. And you do things in the book, which I find is interesting where you, you know, at one point, I think you say something like, I'm going to say, you know, if this she says, essentially, if this is all I am to you, then pay me. And you, you immediately joke about, you know, how much money it would save you. And there's that humor in there. Yeah, part of me feels like, you know, the, the landing is, is in the relationship. It's the, it's the dynamic that has played over and over again. How long did it take to be able to, because you say, I'm crazy, you say, like, I must be like, I keep going back for more, like, I know I'm not, I'm not getting out of this.

15:17Yeah. What is the thread that kept you there, that kept the wheel going even in consciousness. That's what I'm saying. Like, you know, people will, you talk about releasing it out of the body. But I think before it ever releases out of the body, there has to be some awareness coming to the table. You, you know, because otherwise you're just blindly going through, like you said, you're stuck in pattern, but there's a level of awareness and awakening. Yeah. So what kept, what was the thread that, that kept you hooked to this person. Okay. So I know you're familiar with trauma bonding and love bombing, right? And so what happens is you get addicted to that. And it's done intermittently. Initially, it's a lot at the very beginning and then over time, the intermittency gets further and further apart. So what you, an example I use sometimes that I just started using this is imagine if every day was Christmas day, you wouldn't appreciate Christmas. You know, I mean, but yeah, but now because it's a year apart, you can't wait for Christmas.

16:19You can't wait for that feeling again, right? That you get at Christmas time when you're giving gifts or receiving us, whatever it is. And so that's an analogy for what's happening, you know, every so often you get this incredible love and caring. And it's just amazing. Who doesn't want that kind of attention, right? And without realizing it. And this is where we come back to what you were saying at the beginning, chemistry. Yeah. People misunderstand chemistry or mistake chemistry for love. And it's not the same thing, right? So when you say what kept me going back, okay? So got to be, got to be honest and got to be vulnerable. So here's the deal. I used to say, right, almost at the end of every chapter and you probably read this in the book. You know, people get to the end of the chapter. God, he's out of it, right? It's over, right? And then the next beginning of the chapter was like, wait a minute, the back in again. How does that happen, right? She almost just stole his house, stole all his belongings, got him put in jail.

17:20How can he possibly justify going back into this relationship? Well, there's a number of things. So first of all, in that particular situation, you know, I got her father involved. She doesn't think of billionaire, right? But she'd already told me things about him that caused me to doubt him. Does that make sense? Because there's people, a master manipulators. They already covered the exits before they even appear, right? They cover everything so that they can talk to themselves at a situation. You know, you and I would never think that way, right? We're not thinking like a game of chess with a person in a relationship. We just love that person and expect them to love his back so far. So there was that going on. So when I called her father and he said to me directly, you know, I think because I called him and said, you know, your daughter's an alcoholic and he goes, oh, yeah, I know. I put her in rehab more times than I can remember. He said, but she just checks in and then she checks out again a few days later. And then he said to me, is she in your house right now?

18:23Right? Now, I didn't know where she was. She got off somewhere. I know she was hiding. And I didn't know where. And I didn't know where. I'm not going to tell him that. I'm going to say she's in here somewhere, but I don't know where, right? I said, yeah, he said, we'll get her out and never let her back in again. If you do, you're a fool. So now when I brought that up with her, then she tells me the story that she'd already told me. My father hates me. I found him with his gay lover. It caused my mom to divorce him. It cost him $100 million, right? He's never forgiven me for that. He threw me in an asylum, blah, blah, blah. So she started to create doubt on his story. Maybe he is still angry, which he wasn't, because he and I eventually became really good friends. So that's number one. They can throw shadow on anything anybody says. And it creates doubt in your mind. And if you can, you want to believe them rather than the person. Yes. You're in a relationship with them, right? And then I would say, you probably, you know, as you know,

19:24I talk to people in the third person, right? In the book. I said, you're probably thinking I should, should have broken up with her, right? What if I did? You wouldn't be enjoying this incredible story, would you? But also, I had to figure out, well, if I'm going to stay, why? So I would say, well, look, here's the deal. I could break up with her and go back to a relatively mediocre normal life, right? Or I could stay living with a former international supermodel who has got a sex attitude. Who has got a sex attitude in a mansion with a sex room. I don't know. You tell me what I should do, right? And so I stuck in there for those reasons as well as I loved her personality, right? I was attracted to it. I was attracted to her confidence. I was attracted to her authenticity, even though it was an authentic self. She wasn't that nice of a person, but at least she was being real. And she didn't hide who she was. Like you said, in that conversation I had, in that conversation with her, I had, and I had many.

20:28She said, look, you knew what you were getting into in the beginning anyway. You knew what you were getting. This isn't what you want. You know what to do. And you go, well, you know, she's got a point. Nobody made me be in this relationship. Nobody forced me to be back with her. I'm doing it because I got something out of it, right? And in the end, and you learned this in the second book, the choice was taken out of my hands. But going back to what I've now discovered and learned as a result of going through this and being committed to understanding these kind of relationships. You really fully understand. It was the universe putting you somebody in your life that you needed. You needed those experiences. You needed to see them as a mirror. You needed to understand the mirrors, learn from them, heal them, and then move forward to a better life. Now, I was blessed in the, I'd already had 20 years of experience in spiritual and personal development. So I had the tools to do that, which most people don't. And that's why it's become, you know, a mission of mine to help people get through this because people are confused.

21:31You know, and it's not just women, it's men too, right? You just confused after he's like, how could this happen to me? What I learned is, and I know you know this too, intelligence doesn't protect you from manipulation. If anything, intelligence makes you more susceptible to narcissistic manipulation. Why? Well, because intelligent people, they can explain anything away, right? Well, this is why they did this or this is why that happened. Or they believe in giving people a second, or sometimes a third or a fourth or a fifth chance, right? And they think they can fix it. And all those things are part of the trap. Well, yeah, and looking at, you know, as a spiritual counselor and having taught so many people, you know, how to live the life of their dreams. And you said you had so many tools out, and to me, tools are tools, right? They're just, they can sit in a bag and not mean anything.

22:36And I think my question is, is you know, in terms of, because you do say you knew, like that you did have intuition. And I think that's looking at, you know, being the victim and then taking the accountability very starkly for, I'm going to step into this very crazy, badly behaved relationship. Sometimes we're drawn to bad behavior, you know what I mean? Absolutely. And I think that's what we are. Yeah. So I mean, I can see it, right? It's very seductive. I think there's a seductive quality around the adventure of it. And I think it not to get lost in the, in the next high. Yeah. But to be able to go deeper. Yeah. But you brought up a really good point earlier. I'm going to get to that in a second. But you know, you can think of people in lots of professions. You know, I have a doctor or someone who is a, an addiction therapist. They get hooked on drugs, right?

23:39It's nothing to do with what you know. It's to do with the law, right? That is going to be specific to you, right? But that law is there to get you into the trap. So that you can learn the lessons. If there was nothing, if people were not getting something out of the relationship, they wouldn't stay, right? We're getting something out of it, right? And by keeping that law and staying in it, you know, I stayed it for three years. You don't usually have to stay that long. You get the gifts out of it. And again, I'm just going to say, you know, so you can see the gift that your self-worth is in where it needs to be. My self-worth was in the, is in the gutter, right? Because I was one something that I had been raised with, no self-worth. I was never good enough. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I was stupid. I was, you know, I would take an exam at school and I never wanted to tell anybody what my answers were, because they would tell me that was the wrong answer they tell me. I was stupid. So I was avoiding pain. I was avoiding rejection, which is kind of funny, because most of my business life has been about, in some way, shape or another.

24:44Sales, which is, you can't get more rejects than that, right? But anyway, so I get into this relationship for a reason, you know, when you said earlier about being a victim. I was never a victim. I say repeatedly throughout the book, I was just as bad a she was, right? I wasn't a victim to it. I was making that conscious choice. But once I really started to study it and really figure out what was really going on, as you're asking these questions right now, which are great questions, right? You start to really have to look at, well, I'm not stupid, right? I did it intentionally, in other words, I'm not saying it was the front of my mind, right? But I'm saying that I was aware of it, but I still kept going until I couldn't anymore, right? And I had to let go. And then I did. But after that, now, and only at that point, are you going to really experience the consequences of staying? And those consequences become the seed of growth, if you want to, right? And so what happens in many, many cases, and you know this too, is that people stay in the victim mode.

25:50He did this, she did that to me. And that's not true. They did it for you. Now people are going to go, listen, who's this crazy English guy telling me this happened for me? I got the receipt. I was in hospital. He beat the crap out of me. Whatever it is, right? I get it. Here's the deal. You can't change that. What you can change is your perception of it and look at what your responsibility was in it. You didn't have to stay. You stayed. That was a choice, right? You accepted being treated that way. That's not acceptable. You allow. You made it acceptable. Now, if you don't change that, you don't take ownership of that and other things, you're just going to keep repeating it. This is going to come in and they're going to be this persona that is attractive to you, whether it's this confidence, whether it's this charm, whatever it is, you're just going to get taken by it again. Once you recognize those things, there's nothing wrong with those things, but with a relationship, again, I use the analogy of an empath with a narcissist.

26:57It's not always an empath with a narcissist, but because we're talking generally, we're giving generalizations. There's a giver in a seeker. The empath is the giver. They can never give enough because they have been led to believe, or they do believe that if they give enough love, if they give enough, they will be loved. It doesn't work, no matter how much they give, it just doesn't work. And the narcissist, if it are in, believes it's too scary to love, but I can make them love me. And as long as I have them love me and I don't love them, I'm in control. I'm safe. It's all about safety, right? And so how can I get this person to love me without me giving them love? And that's where the manipulation comes in. And that's where they learn these skills. And they are skills of human skills. They're life skills. Yeah, they're life skills. Yeah, but they learn very young.

27:57Yeah. And so like I said, intelligence doesn't protect you from manipulation. And I talked about the things that intelligent people tend to do, you know, they explain away because they have compassion and they're kind and they want to give people second, third, fourth, fifth, chances, whatever it is. And they want to help. And they think they can fix the person. These are how they end up. These are part of getting in a toxic relationship. So the very core of it, though, the empath wants to give, give, give. But well, however much they give, it's never enough, which causes them to get frustrated at certain times, right? So they can flip out, right, and get angry because it's like, whatever I do is never enough for you. You know, you're in it, right? And then the narcissist is like, however much the other person gives, it's never enough. Yeah, it's an empty well that can never get filled on either side, but for both or either side, exactly on very, that's, that's the mirror. And so, and one of my, then I'm just looking at you today, what do you know about self love today?

29:03What do I know about self love? Well, it's the most important. Yes, you can't love anybody else really until you love yourself. And so how did I come to that realization, I guess, is the real question, right? By spending a lot of time on my own, I've been single for four years. I have no desire to get in a real, nah, I had relationships before that after Tamaz, right? But I just, well, partly I got, I became single because I wanted to write the book. That's a difficult, difficult book to write when you're in a relationship for reasons that you mentioned at the beginning. It's very sexually graphic, right? So no one wants to be with the guy who's writing a book about his sexual relationships with another woman, especially beautiful woman, because that can make a woman feel really insecure, right? So I stopped dating for that reason, and then the more time I spent alone, the more I liked it, and the more I enjoy it now. So I'm not saying that I won't date again, I will, but it would be in a different way. You know, I'm never going to give it my freedom again. Now you got to understand, I made my sixties, right? So this is different. If I was in my twenties, I wouldn't be saying that, right?

30:04This is a different part of my life, right? So now I'm at the point where, well, I've been married four times, as you said earlier, right? I just want to say what you, and so when you look back, what do you think you're, how do you look at love today and commitment? Yeah. Well, it's not just about love and commitment, it's about intimacy, right? So when you're terrified, I was terrified of intimacy. Why? Because I never experienced love from my parents. My parents were not capable of giving love to be the me or my sister, right? And so what does that do? I mean, it's very difficult to have intimacy, right? You know, if your mom has never been nurturing and caring and loving, that's where you learn those skills, right? That's when you learn how to do that. And if you can't get that from your mother, you're going to be scared of trying, I don't, I don't, I don't recognize this when I was a kid, right? But I recognize it now by doing that work. So I was afraid of intimacy. And so then you go, well, how do you become intimate?

31:04Okay. Well, people think, you know, you're going to get intimacy in the bedroom. No, you won't. You'll never find it there. You have to find it before you get in the bedroom. So how do we develop intimacy? Well, it begins with trust, right? So we've all got, you've heard this millions of times. We've all got skeletons in the closet, right? We've all done and said things. Well, I'm saying all everybody out of a man. Maybe there's some outliers out there. But usually people have got things that they're pushing down that would not want other people to know. And nothing wrong with that, right? And I'm not, you know, I wrote a book about, you know, me have been in the same asylum, me getting teased and ridiculed at school for having a small dick for all these crazy things happen my life. And I let it all out, right? So I'm not suggesting you do that initially to be vulnerable, right? I did it because I wanted to give men and women the understanding that vulnerability is not a weakness.

32:04It's a strength, right? Because once you brought all these things out into the open, then really nobody can say anything you haven't said about yourself. Now, having said that, you know, you don't want to do that with the whole world like I did, right? And you definitely don't want to do that on the first date, right? That would just not be good. But once you're going to get, once you've decided that this is a person I want to have a long term relationship, potentially even marry them. And I want intimacy with that person. Then the only way I'm going to get that is if I open up about myself, that if I share all these things that I have been ashamed of, that I have been feeling guilty about, that I don't want people to know why? Because if you don't, you'll never be able to love that person. And they will feel that and they'll never love you either. Why? Because they're going to know you're holding something back. You know you haven't told them some things about yourself that they might find out later. And then I'll love you. So people say, well, we're hang on a second, Stephen. What if I tell them and then they tell everybody, then is that someone you want to be with?

33:07You've told them intimate things about yourself that you want them to keep private and sacred, right? And they go out and tell everybody else, is that someone you want to spend the rest of your life with? And if they're going to find that out and decide they don't want to be with you, when do you want to know that? At the beginning or the end? So you're either going to save yourself a lot of pain or you're going to have an amazing relationship together, right? And then when you get in the bedroom, there's tremendous trust. Anybody can express their sexuality without fear of being judged without fear of someone leaving them because of those things, right? Because you've shared that intimacy with them and that's when you can have much deeper. Yeah, I just want to go back into it because you said you've been you've been single for the last four years and talking about intimacy and trust. You know, the relationship is the practice, the living practice. But to me, there's the point before you're in a relationship or when you're not in relationship and maybe, and definitely when you're in it as well, but how do you develop intimacy for yourself?

34:17How do you develop self trust for yourself to know that when you show up in a relationship that you can open up? It's a big deal to surrender, to understand yourself so well that you have trust in yourself that you know that those choices going farther are going to come from your alignment, your resonance, what's important for you and good for you and coming from a self-love place, including intimacy. I think being intimate with yourself, this is what I feel is that being intimate with yourself and being able to go there, which again, you know, how did you find being able to sit with yourself? Like what did it mean from after doing all of the work because you've clearly done a lot of work in your lifetime, a lot of self development work, and then it sounds to me like you had to sit in it, sit with the tools, sit with the being, sit with the intimacy, and what did that look like? Yeah, well, you know, in between me writing the book and having this relationship with Tamaz, there were six years, right?

35:23So during that six years, while I was in an intimate relationship, I'd done a lot of that work and so that's it showed up in that relationship. It wasn't because I didn't have intimacy that I ended up being single for four years, right? So I've done that work, so I've had the experience of reaping the rewards after I've done the work. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. It doesn't mean, I mean, there was still a lot of things, I mean, I'm getting stuff all the time when I, wow, I hadn't even realized that. There was something like yesterday, but there was something about a, oh, this is going to sound weird. But like a week ago, you know, I'm at home and I was getting angry about something and I went, what the heck is going on here? Right? It's a nothing thing, right? And so I realized that that was again from my childhood of having anxiety because everything I did, I had to do super fast. So I'd make a mistake so I could get picked on because my father was a bully, right? My father's a bully, right?

36:27And so he'd want to find a way to bully me by making me anxious, pushing me and pushing me, pushing me and making me make a mistake because I was anxious. And I hadn't even recognized that to the point where I have anxiety in my life that I hadn't realized that I want everything, I want to do everything really fast. And what's the freaking, what's the point? So if I can't do it fast, I get frustrated that the smallest thing, right? So I could be, I could be hanging something up. And if you didn't go right into place, I mean, like, what, you know, I get frustrated because of this pattern from when I was a child. So I'm not trying to say we've gone through this stuff that I got it all down perfectly. I'm still learning. I'm still experiencing things, I'm seeing things, which is the beauty of it as well, you know, you're still, you're never going to stop learning and growing, right? As long as we're alive, if you're open to it, if you're prepared to take responsibility for your actions, I'm going, I'm creating this right now. This is me, I'm creating this frustration. If you look around, you can't see any frustration, it's in you, right?

37:32You are allowing that to happen. So why? Why are you allowing that? And then I said that, it's just suddenly when you asked those kind of questions, you see the reflection, you see where it started in your life because I've done it so many times. Now, I also want to say this, right? So, you know, I have a belief that nothing happens to you, everything happens for you, which is really easy to say. It's different to live, right? And because if you say it happened to me, now you're a victim, right? If you say it happened for you and you find the silver lining or even gold lining, now you're wisdom. And you have a choice in every single situation. Now, the other thing I'm going to say is it's okay to be a victim, you know, in the immediacy of for a little while, you just don't want to stay there, right? We're all human beings, you're going to be upset, you're going to be angry, you know, I told you I still get angry sometimes, right? But then I look at it, right? And so for me now, when these things happen for me, the time between me being angry and out of balance gets shorter and shorter.

38:37And then I come back into bounds because then I say, you know, after I've been angry, I've vented about it, and then I go, I don't, you know, I talked to myself, I'll be where you'll do right now. Okay, all right. So this happened for me. Go ahead and explain that. This is going to be good, right? And so then I've committed to looking for it. Now, you don't find it right away, you know, sometimes it can take days, weeks or even months or even years, you know, when I talk about, you know, being ridiculed as a kid for, you know, my mom sent me to school and school clothes that were too big. And so kids would just, you know, yeah, kids are right. So the T's year and ridiculed you and laugh at you. And then being the kid in the shower that gets picked on for having a small dick, you can imagine that when it goes throughout the school, you know, you're a girl and you think, and if she's going to say any minute, you know, you're the kid with a small dick, right? Right. Miliating and it was traumatic. And I'm not wishing it on anybody or being in a scene asylum, you become ashamed of it, you know, especially back then. And it's not really that much easier now, because you don't want anybody to know that about you, right?

39:39And so you push all these things down with shame and so on and so forth, but all those things, and we're not going to necessarily get on all of it right now, every single one of those things turned out to have a silver lining. A beautiful silver lining. Would you share, would you share just a couple of those silver linings just going from, because there are people that have deep pain and don't understand. Sure. Yeah. You know, what's that, what's what is the deep, you know, from from the pain? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So only by being committed to that belief, could I find it, right? Which ones you want to pick on? Which ones you want to go with? Do you want me to do more? I can do more. All right. So the first one is what? So, um, well, let me tell you a story of how that pattern came up in my relationship with Tomas, right? And she brought it to light, which helped me have a healing, which was not our intention, right? But anyway, so we're in this relationship. And as you know in the book, it's tumultuous, right? There's a chaos all the time. We're breaking up, traveling, we're mad crazy love. We're breaking up all this stuff. But this at this point, we are broken up.

40:45She's got her own place, but she's living in the most of the time. So I had to go on a speaking trip. Right? And she knew I was going on the speaking trip. We broken up. She wasn't living in the house. It's the whole of one of my cars. I had no idea where she was. So I, but I had to go on this trip. So, uh, and she knew I was going to go on this trip and she knew I was going to be away from the house, right? Now she could, she could get in the house whenever she wanted to because usually the windows and doors unlocked. She left them unlocked so she'd get back in and I didn't really care. But anyway, for this reason, for this event, some reason why, because there's going to be a way I didn't know where she was. I locked all the doors and the windows. So she comes around. I leave on a Thursday. She came around on Friday night and she couldn't get in the house. So she just broke in. There's no point in locking her out. She's just going to break in, but she did. Now what had happened was a couple of weeks prior to this. There'd been some incident, criminal activity in the neighborhood and they called the police, but the police were very slow in responding.

41:48So the community director called the police chief and shoot him out. So listen, we pay all this money in taxes, you know, you should be here faster than anybody or whatever. So he's obviously not up here about that. So then this alarm goes off at the police station at one o'clock in the morning and he says, right, let me show you how fast we can come out. Right. So he sends out six squad cars, two SUVs, police dogs, and they all converge on my house. She's sitting in the Bentley with the roof down her arms out like damsel and distress. Right. The whole neighborhood is lit up with the police lights, the dogs barking running through people's gardens. It's a zoo. So they call me right. She probably had me on speed dial by then. Anyway, they call me and they said she's here. Right. I said, she said he said she wants to get in. Well, she's she can be very vindictive. Right. So I said, listen, under no circumstances letter in that house. Right. You can't letter any goes, well, let me call you back. Cause we back. You said we just spoke to the police chief. You said we got a letter in.

42:53I want you got to be kidding us. This is my house. You can't let her in that well, we know she's living here most of the time. blah blah blah. So they letter in meanwhile, I'm 3000 miles away and all these ideas of what she's going to do to the house are going through my head. So anyway, I get home and she's obviously gone. No way to be seen. Right. So I walk in the house and I look around and I'm like, everything is fine. Everything is in its rightful place. Thank you. She turned over no way. Right. So I go in the kitchen. I put on the kettle and I go out of the kitchen. I come back and the cat isn't even isn't even boiling. Right. So I go to the can only click the switch. Nothing. I look behind. She snipped the wire. Now obviously that's not the only wire she snipped right. She snipped she'd snipped every wire on every electrical product in the house. So when I've gone through this and I go, yeah, that's not it. I know there's going to be more. Right.

43:53Now as I just told you when I was a kid, my mom sent me to school and school closed the way to be for me. Not a fault. We didn't have any money. So she was trying to think ahead and you know, I would moan and complain about it. And she said, you know, you're going to grow into which I probably never would. Anyway, my point is, as I'm getting humiliated, I got to find a way out of that pain. Right. So I decided I had to find some ways to make some money so I could buy my own school clothes and I did. And from that time forward, clothes became very important to me. So then I got left that again. Right. For the clothes I was wearing. And so throughout my life, clothes would become very important. And now, you know, I'm making millions of dollars a year. So I got a pretty amazing wardrobe. Right. And so when I read and I thought about that suddenly, I went, oh, no, no, right. So I go to my closet and everything looked fine. God for that. Right. So then I go in and I pull the clothes back and of course, she's cut a multi shreds. Right.

44:54Now I did not say at that moment, it's fine. This has happened for me. It's all good. No, I'm a human being. I was furious. Right. I was so angry at what she had done to me. Right. Now, and again, so I went into victim mode, right. And then it doesn't come automatically. You try and think about, well, why has this happened for me? What can I get out of this? Right. And it's very slow. Something that was pretty, that was pretty deep for me. That was a deep wound for me at that moment. Right. So finally, I sit in the armchair looking out over the lake and I'm going, okay, this is going to be good. This is going to be really good. How? No, this has happened for me. So very often the first thing you get is an it, you know, so the first thing that came to my mind as I was really trying to force this, but I was still for straight and I was still angry was. Okay, well, I guess it's just clothes, right. You can replace clothes. My brain goes, that's bullshit. Right. That is not going to satisfy your pain here.

45:58So eventually, well, actually just popped in my mind without me trying to force a reason. The word just came into my mind. Attachment. I realized that I was attached to those clothes. Now, nothing wrong with having nice clothes. It's the attachment that's the problem. What does that mean? What does attachment mean? It means when you think you believe. Whatever it is. Are a part of who you are. And if you lose them, you will be somehow worth less. That's a problem. Yes. So she helped me realize that, right? To understand that. That was just the beginning of me letting go of so many things, right? But my point is, if I hadn't come to that realization, I would still be angry at her to this day. And I would still be carrying her. And it would have been destructive for myself rather than coming to the understanding. And that's happened in so many other ways in the relationship to the point where, you know, she said she's the love of my life. And she was the love of my life.

47:06But that doesn't mean I would ever be with her again. I would never. And I know I could if I wanted to and I'm never going to do that. Because now I have a different, I'm a different person that person doesn't exist anymore. Well, there's love and there's love without attachment and just because you have love. I mean, I think of us as we are love, right? We are emanating. We are being love. We are. And so to love another, you can love someone and still have standards and close that chapter and know it's it's not good. So thank you. I just want to stop that here because I know there's so much more to talk about. I just want to transition into asking you some of my questions as we slowly wrap up. What is one truth? Your body has always known that took years for your mind to catch up to. Wow. Yeah. One truth. Well, I think most of those truths, right? The authenticity is not a weakness. It's a power. Right?

48:12As is authenticity, but you have to have vulnerability to let go of those that shame and those secrets, you know, to be authentic, right? To be okay with yourself. I really didn't understand when I was a kid what a boundary was because my parents never let me have any boundaries. They would never have respected boundaries or allowed me to create boundaries. So I really didn't. And so when things happen, it was always my fault because that's what my parents told me. I was always wrong. They were never wrong, right? And you know, when I was, I think I maybe mentioned when I was a kid that I just wanted to run away from home and I did a number of times, right? I don't know if I talked about the analogy of Tommy the terror, the little dog, right? I talked about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So that was me. I was just running away, right? And that's why partly why I had four marriages because when things would go wrong, I could, I became overwhelmed, which meant I couldn't see a solution.

49:12And so I'd run away because that was my pattern from when I was a child. I didn't recognize that. It's just that feeling of overwhelmed, right? I didn't feel like was anything I could do or where I could go. So I've just run away. So these patterns don't go away and become more and more destructive. The longer it takes you to recognize them and deal with them, right? Yeah, I told them universe barks it out. Yeah, even even then, Gwen, you know, you know this, right? So it's not easy for us to see it even then because we live in a society that tells you it's okay to be a victim. Or you poor thing. It's terrible that he or she did that to you, right? And so now you buy an interacus, yeah, feel about about it, right? They're not helping. They're not helping at all, right? It's, I'm not saying they should. They're not a therapist, right? But you need to someone to say, hold on a second. No one is denying that they did those things. Of course they did. You know, you've got the pictures from the Osblow, whatever it is, you've got the receipts.

50:17No one is saying they didn't do those things. That's not the point. The point is you don't have any control over that. What you do have control over that over is how you live your life going forward. You know, thank you. Do you see what I mean? That's what's important. Yeah. What is the most intimate moment you've ever had that had nothing to do with sex? I have a lot because I'm afraid I'm afraid of physical intimacy or it was. I'm better, right? But it's still an issue, right? Still an issue. So the most important thing to me, and part of this, and this is going to sound weird to some of the audience, right? I'm a big believer in astrology, right? So I'm an aquarium. So the big thing for aquariums is, you know, humanity and his friendship, you know? And for me, and I have a lot of women friends, and sometimes they get frustrated because I'm not sexually attractive, attracted to them, right?

51:18Because it's gone over that line. This has been a challenge for me in my life as well. I can be very sexually attracted to one, but not. Want to have an intimate relationship with them intellectually. Does that make sense? Yes. Whereas when I have a very deep spiritual intellectual relationship with a woman, then it seems to distinguish my sexual desire for them, right? That has also been a problem for me, right? So it's been learning how to balance those two, which I think is the same for most people. You know, some people you're physically attracted to and some people you're not. Nothing wrong with that, right? It's just honoring your own preferences, right? Thank you. Yeah, right? Just honoring your own preferences. I did have, you know, and that's one of the reasons that to Mars was special is because I did have some amazing conversations with her. She's incredibly intelligent, right? And I love that about her. And she actually changed my perspective on a lot of things, including sexuality, right?

52:24So, and I talk about that some of that in the book. I mean, sometimes I used to listen to her and then at the end, I'd have my mouth, my jaw would be like drop them going, holy crap. That's really good stuff, right? Yeah. So I know that it can happen. I'm just saying it's, and I think anybody would say that too, you know, having someone that you have that desire for and intellectual stimulation is not easy to find. Thank you. If you could be remembered for one sensation you gave someone, what would it be? You know, when I were with Tony Robbins for a while, and he used to interview famous people. And one time, so we're in this room and he's with Wayne Dyer, you remember Wayne Dyer, right? And so he said he used to ask everybody that question at the end of his interviews, right? Well, how do you want to be remembered? And I always remember Wayne Dyer saying, I don't necessarily want to be remembered. I just want to live my life to the full when I'm here.

53:25And as I thought about that more and more, sometimes people live to be remembered. You know what I mean? I want to leave here and people remember me. Well, they're not going to remember you forever, right? They're just not, right? So why not live your life for you and your family and the people you love rather than for people out there that you hope, remember you that probably won't, right? So what I want from myself is to have lived life fully, to have loved, to love fully, to love fully. To love fully. Thank you. That's beautiful. If pleasure were a language, what would your first word be? Love. Thank you. If your erotic life had a title like a novel or a film, what would it be called? The Venus flytrap, sex, lies and repercussions. Beautiful. Thank you. What is one thing that you've never set out loud, but you wish someone would ask you about? Well, I'll tell you what popped in my mind. So my answer is, I'm going to ask you, what is your favorite word?

54:27I'm going to ask you, what is your favorite word? I wish someone would ask you about. Well, I'll tell you what popped in my mind. So my intuition has said, who are you really? Who are you really? What part of your erotic self are you still afraid to bring to the light? Not much. There is probably a lot that isn't in the book. Yeah. So what part of my sexuality? Yeah. What if your erotic, sorry, what is the one thing you've never set out loud? I'm going to lost my questions. What part of your erotic self are you still afraid to bring to the light? Well, I mean, here's the thing. I mean, I wrote all of that in the book, but that doesn't mean I want to talk about it all the time. Right? It doesn't mean that, you know, as I go to a gathering, I go to a party that I'm going to say, okay, so is it okay if I whip my cock out or is it okay?

55:27I mean, I'm being exaggerating there, but you know what I mean? If someone wanted to get into a conversation with me about that, I could get into a conversation with it, but I'm not wearing on my sleeve. And I know that's not really what you mean. I do know, I mean, I talked about so many things in the book. I don't know if this is in the second book, but when I do mention it in the first book, you know, Tomás was bisexual, right? And she wanted me to sleep with other women, as long as she was there, right? And I just never wanted to do that, you know, so and that is unusual. I'm told for men, men very often want to sleep with a couple of women and that I was never interested in that. Now there's different reasons for that, right? Besides the fact that I can only usually cope with more, more, more time anyway, right? But that I'm very intense, right? So I want to focus on that. And that would be just too distracting for me, right? I want to throw myself into as I do and it says there in the book, I want to throw myself into one person, right?

56:29But also as I talk to my therapist about that, this is because you're insecure. I think everyone has their own preferences. I'm only cutting you off because I need to, I let it go on, but I'm going to ask you one more question, which is if the soul has a scent, what does your smell like today? Hmm. Okay. Well, my one of my favorite smells is vanilla. Beautiful. And I will circle since we probably have 10 seconds left is who are you really? You're not supposed to ask that. No, you. I have no idea. I know he said what I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. Right? So who am I? I'm the light. Beautiful. Thank you. So just as we close up, please let anyone know where to reach you and to read your book. Well, I think I sent you the link to give to your audience for the three chapters there, right? Because we're not here to talk about the book anyway. So if the people like what the hell is this book about? So, you know, get the first three, it's not the first three chapters, it's three chapters of the book.

57:37They'll give you a sense of it. And if you like that, then maybe you want to get the rest of the book. Beautiful. Thank you. And you can find all of his links on the website. And so for today, I'm just going to wrap it up because I know we have to go. Thank you for a thrilling conversation. Have a wonderful everyone have a wonderful weekend. And I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thank you. Dr. Steven. Thank you. Very well. It's a pleasure. Thank you for listening to Skin and Soul with me, Guinnam. Join me Fridays at 10 a.m. PST on Transformation Talk Radio. Catch the podcast anytime on your favorite platforms. You can follow me on Instagram at Lovology. Ready to take the next step. Book a compatibility call with me at GuinnamCarslee.com.